Altera
by hikachu
Summary: All the lives Guts and Griffith never lived. A collection of AU snapshots.
1. Modern times, Griffith is a married man

**Modern times; Griffith is already married to Charlotte when he meets Guts.**

There was someone standing in the rain.

From the window of his apartment, Guts could barely distinguish the blurred figure from the dark buildings and asphalt down in the small square, but there was something like a halo around the person's head. Even in the distance, their face—their skin itself, and their hair, seemed almost to be glowing.

"Griffith…" Guts whispered the name without even being aware of it.

He blinked once, twice, then his eyes grew huge and he rushed to the door.

"I—Gotta go for a minute! Be right back!"

Casca – his almost but not quite yet girlfriend – emerged from the kitchen, where she'd been generously helping with dinner.

Anything she might have said was drowned out by the noise of the door slamming shut.

When he exited the apartment complex, Guts' left shoulder became quickly drenched in spite of the umbrella resting on the other; as he ran towards the center of the square, he could feel the water sloshing inside his shoes and climbing its way from the hem of his jeans to his knees.

Griffith was still there, apparently staring at something Guts couldn't see.

"Hey! What the hell are you thinking, standing here with this weather?! Have you gone crazy? Hey!"

Guts grasped his shoulder and dragged him under the umbrella. "Griffith!"

It was only then that Griffith raised his head enough to be able to look at him in the eye, like he always did when they were talking. His gaze, however, remained oddly unfocussed.

Feeling a mix of worry and anxiety filling him with every passing second, Guts tried shaking him again.

"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be on a plane to wherever-it-was for your anniversary with Charlotte?"

"Ah…" Griffith blinked slowly, absently. "Yes. The anniversary. The trip. But, if I left now, you would already be gone when I got back, wouldn't you?"

"I—Yeah, though if you wanted to tell me something, you could have just—"

"Is Casca coming with you?"

Griffith's voice was soft but steady, and sounded just like the person Guts had seen almost everyday during the past year. There was something about his expression though, something about his words that was disjointed, weird.

"She is, isn't she," he whispered. His eyes seemed once again fixed onto something else: looking up, past Guts.

Puzzled, Guts reached out his hand again, as if to make sure that this person really was Griffith and not some weird hallucination that would dissolve beneath his fingers, but it was caught it in midair. Thin fingers wrapping around his with all their strength. Never letting go.

"There is," Griffith began with a slow nod. "There is something that I had to tell you, yes."

He took a step forward; Guts found himself unable to move. He saw Griffith's other hand hovering next to his cheek, his fingers flexing a couple times, trembling uncharacteristically, before touching his skin.

"Don't go," he murmured, low but clear: usual, commanding Griffith. "You mustn't go. You can't go."

And of all the things going through his head back then, of all the things he could have said, it was only the stupidest, and most insignificant, to leave Guts' mouth: why.

"Because," Griffith was mouthing the words next to his lips. "That is my decision."

And maybe he should have resisted when Griffith did kiss him, should have pushed him away, because they were friends, and Griffith was married and he had Casca waiting for him and they were about to leave to see the rest of Europe together and then things between then would change, get better, they would finally—But no, there was something about this man, this unrecognizable, broken man, that quietly commanded him: don't you dare. And it all felt like something he should have expected.

Don't you dare, Griffith's eyes seemed to tell him, and they reminded Guts of a hawk's like never before: open, unblinking, somewhat empty but also incredibly focused.

It was only when he raised his hands to Griffith's face that they finally closed, and Guts felt their chests touching as Griffith slumped slightly forward; he saw his shoulders sink and it was like Griffith's whole body was sighing: _finally_, or, _thank god_.


	2. The little mermaid

**The little mermaid**

Once he learned of all the elaborate rites the living on the surface had devised to send off their dead (or, actually: to soothe their own heart), Griffith would always link the memory of the bottom of the sea to the cold, dark, wet, lonely holes where bodies were left to rot.

He had no reason to fear the ocean like humans did, and he had no reason to love it or respect it like humans did. There was no mystery, no shadow left, between rocks and corals and dunes of sands, where the hope of something great or divine or romantic could still resist the bleak light of truth, for him.

The ocean wasn't home, had never been anything more than a cage, and it would have become his coffin, if Griffith had never found the means to leave.

The surface world was warm and vivid; everything in it seemed to shine and, though Griffith had quickly learned that there was much more water than there would ever be land on this round planet, it seemed endless, and then.

And then, more than all this, more than everything else, there was something that shone brighter than the sun.

A beloved figure with countless expressions and the warmth of hands made rough by hard work and sea salt.

It outshined any treasure he'd collected inside his grotto, any desire and any beautiful thing he had ever longed for.

It made Griffith wish he could still talk. He wished he could call that name, even if it meant that the needles pricking his legs when he walked would turn into knives. He wished to see that face turn around for him and light up for him.

He wished to know the warmth of those hands through his skin and for many more things—and they were all going to be taken away from him before Griffith could even attempt to claim them for himself.

And, it's either you or her, they told him, and pale blue-ish hands (had he also looked like that once, like something fading away and cold and viscid like a corpse) rose above the waves to present a golden dagger to him.

It's either you or her.

And Griffith didn't exactly hate her maybe, but not resenting her for stealing away the only thing he had ever wanted for himself was impossible. How dare you, who gave you the right to do this, he wanted to yell at her and tear her to pieces.

It's either you or her. Those were the pacts since the beginning after all: your voice for these legs; get his love or forfeit your life.

And Griffith had already made his choice.


	3. In which they are high school students

**In which they are high school students. **

Griffith broke the kiss and lifted his head to look at the clock hanging on the wall above the door, but Guts' hand gripped the nape of his neck and pushed him back down before he could actually get to read the time.

Guts' kisses were brief, but intense and rough. There was, Griffith found, something endearing about that sort of earnestness, something that made him want to smile and hold Guts closer—wish that nobody else could ever see him as he was during these moments. And, when he looked in the mirror and saw, the small bruises, the teeth marks, a mysterious feeling, warm and syrupy like honey, spread through his chest to his cheeks and the tip of his fingers.

"Wait," Griffith managed to breathe before giving in again – but just for a second – to kiss Guts' cheekbone. The thought of notes and textbooks abandoned on the desk had wedged itself between the fresh impression of Guts' palm on his shoulder from a moment before and the question of, where should I touch him next, and it wouldn't leave him alone.

"Wait," he repeated, louder, and swatted Guts' hands away.

"No," was all Guts said before grasping a fistful of white-blond hair and tugging.

It hurt a little, but Griffith only felt like laughing, because it was almost cute – in the peculiar way someone like Guts could be cute – and because he himself couldn't care less about the books or tomorrow's test, after all, not right now; not when Guts was so very warm beneath him and looked at him with such eyes.

Griffith loved being watched by those eyes. He loved Guts' focused expression, and it reminded him of the times he'd stop to watch him train or, before that, get into what for anyone else would haven been hopeless fights.

It was what had prompted him to walk up to Guts one day to challenge him: if I win, you will stop skipping everyday and join our club.

Guts gave Griffith's hair another tug.

"Hey. The hell are you giggling about?" he sounded vaguely annoyed.

Griffith leaned his cheek into Guts' hand, and his smile grew wider—but visibly less innocent.

"I was thinking," he started slowly, staring at the other with cat-like eyes. "When did you get so assertive?"

It wasn't without satisfaction that he saw Guts swallow, his features going from irritated to something softer or even lost, maybe.

"I've been learning from the best," he attempted to retort with a weak grin.

"Well then," Griffith began with an angelic smile. "Should I remind you who belongs to whom?"

And so he did.


	4. Catholic boarding school AU

**In which they attend a catholic boarding school.**

They could tell him that he should have been grateful, and that he should have been happy all they wanted, but Guts knew that the only reason he had been shoved into this den of stuck up snobs was that some clown with too much money thought that taking in a few kids after the orphanage was shut down would earn him extra points with the public opinion.

Guts had no doubt that the streets would have been a much better option: no constricting uniforms, no mass every Sunday and no waking up at dawn to pray, no snotty rich kids looking down on him and no dumb dead languages to learn.

When he set foot into Lacombrade for the first time, Griffith, with his ribbon neatly tied around his neck, polished shoes and perfect grades, glowed brightly before his fourteen year old's eyes as the incarnation of everything that Guts already hated about that secluded world.

"As an upperclassman and the head of this dormitory, it is my duty to help you," he said on that first day. His eyes were sparkling and he never left Guts alone after that.

* * *

Latin made no sense, Greek was outright unreadable, trying to reason out math exercises made Guts feel like a hamster futilely running on its wheel, and the abstractions of philosophy seemed the perfect pastime for the bored bourgeoisie with too much time on their hands.

And every time Griffith listened to this grumbled tirade, and every time he laughed and tried to help Guts get through his homework.

"Don't you have your own to worry about?"

"Yes. But I like you, so I don't mind."

"I'd like you better if you stopped saying gross stuff and just let me go out and relax a little."

"… Alright. But I will come with you."

Griffith's eyes were always sparkling like diamonds, it seemed. "I want to relax too," he added.

"… Do whatever the hell you want."

At some point, Guts had started to think that, maybe Griffith wasn't so bad.

He never forced him to finish his homework, after all.

* * *

Detention was never fun, but detention with professor Yulius was _the worst_.

"For the third time. I asked you. The differences between soteriology in Saint Augustine and in Saint Thomas."

Guts sighed and barely registered Griffith entering the otherwise empty classroom with a whispered apology and some maps between his arms that he knew belonged inside the closet at the back of the room.

"For the third time, I don't. Fucking. Know."

He saw the professor grit his teeth, his whole body tense up with anger. He saw Yulius' hand tightening around the handle of the cane he didn't really need but always carried around.

Guts braced himself for the blow and told himself that he would get the damn cane and break it in two this time, but the blow never came and there was blood dripping from Griffith's nose and mouth.

"He still hasn't gotten used to life in Lacombrade, professor. I apologize in his stead."

Yulius was obviously seething.

"You—Don't think you can just do as you please only because the Principal—"

Griffith's eyes flashed with something Guts couldn't read. They were different, still bright but dull. Like ice.

"I do not think that the Principal will appreciate knowing that his students, the precious children entrusted to him by their own parents, are being subjected to such barbaric treatment."

The last thing Guts saw before Griffith dragged him out of the room was, a pale and trembling man.

"Why…?" he muttered, staring at Griffith's back before him as he let himself be led through the hallway.

"I already told you, didn't I. I like you. Therefore nobody else is allowed to harm you; you're mine and mine alone."

Somehow, those words made Guts' heart beat faster.

One week after this incident, professor Yulius was rushed to the nearest hospital. Small, almost powder-like fragments of glass were found in the soup that he'd been drinking before he suddenly started to cough up blood.

* * *

There were nights when Guts woke up to an empty room.

* * *

"This fever is a nasty one, isn't it."

Hands on his hips, Griffith was scrutinizing him with an unreadable expression.

From his bed, Guts tried to articulate: don't look down on me, but the only thing that came out was a weak wheezing sound.

Griffith, however, seemed to understand and grinned a little.

"It's alright. Just take your medicine and you will get better soon. Can you sit up?"

Guts blinked slowly.

"Ah, right. Well then."

Griffith poured the medicine into a glass of water and sat on Guts' bed. For a while, he seemed to be pondering something, then, he raised the glass and drank from it.

The medicine was bitter. Griffith's lips incredibly soft and warm.

The next morning, for the first time, Griffith singing at mass seemed the furthest thing from an ethereal angel.

Guts couldn't forget the dreams from the previous night.

* * *

On some of the nights Guts woke up alone, Griffith emerged from the bathroom with his hair still damp, absent eyes, and reddened skin.

* * *

The Principal lived on school grounds, in a rather small but luxurious dependance, in front of a patch of exotic flowers and grass that always grew muddy after a storm.

And it was with mud on his clothes and a bruise on his face that Griffith found Guts, one day after class.

"What happened?"

"Dumb fight," Guts muttered without looking at him.

"Was someone bothering you again?"

Guts shook his head. "They were saying… some really stupid things. Things that ain't true. Idiots, the lot of them. Was annoying. That's all."

As they walked together to the dormitory, Griffith saw the glance Guts threw in the direction of the dependance, and it made his blood freeze.

* * *

It was mud that Guts saw, on one of those nights, on Griffith's usually well polished shoes.

"You're an orphan like me, right?"

The question made Griffith jump.

It wasn't something he tried to hide—if anything, people and teachers were even more impressed by his accomplishments after learning about his background.

However—

"Yes," he smiled. "I was adopted by the Principal when I was still a child. It's only thanks to that that I am allowed to study in such a prestigious boarding school."

"Nah. An amazing person like you—Someone like you doesn't need anyone's help to succeed. I'm sure you'd still have ended up here, in a way or another."

"Thank you."

Guts' grin was so earnest.

Griffith kept smiling and hoped it didn't waver.

* * *

Finally, one night, Guts found Griffith sitting in a tub filled with cold water (Lacombrade Academy's rule #13: no hot water will be supplied to the dormitories, from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m.).

Though his eyes were fixed on it, he didn't seem to notice the thin lines of blood blooming across the forearm he kept scrubbing insistently.

It took Guts one long moment of stunned silence to realize that his chest and his neck were in the same state.

"Griffith! What's gotten into you?! Hey!"

But it wasn't until he'd put him to bed and wrapped all the sheets he could find in the room around his body, that Griffith seemed to notice him.

"Guts…?"

Awkward, unsure, he placed a hand against Griffith's cheek. "Yeah. I'm here."

Silence stretched between them, filling all the gaps, and Guts saw Griffith's eyes grow larger, then narrower; he saw the eyelids tremble and felt the tears running between his palm and Griffith's skin. Beneath his hand, he felt the quiet sobs.

"Why you, of all people…" Griffith whispered.

It was at that moment that Guts knew: it was true, after all.

"I—I'll kill him—"

In the dark, Griffith sat up all of sudden, letting the covers fall around his waist. His skin glowed eerily under the moonlight.

"Would you?" he asked, voice low but firm, any trace of tears gone. "Would you help me with something like this? Guts?"

Because he thought there wasn't anything else someone like him could have done, Guts forced a laugh and said: "Sure. Why do you even ask anyways? You said it: I'm yours."

Though a smile—possibly the largest, most open one Guts had ever seen on that face, the expression that Griffith made after that, seemed to promise more tears. But they never came.

Instead, Griffith threw his arms around Guts' neck and murmured, yes, yes you are, against his lips before kissing him.

* * *

On the night that the dependance burned, Guts held Griffith's hand as they watched from their room.

He squeezed it tightly when the flames grew taller and people started to run and yell and Griffith's eyes seemed to become empty like that night.

"I'm okay," he whispered, but scooted closer, leaning his head on Guts' shoulder. "Everything will be alright now."

And Guts thought, someone like him really couldn't know if things would be alright after this, but he also trusted Griffith above all else, and he thought that, even if the whole world were to crumble, he would do his best to save this person alone.

It would be alright, Guts thought, to die for Griffith's sake.


	5. In which they meet as children

**In which they meet as children.**

"Everyone in this town knows, children and young girls should stay away from those people. If they catch you, they'll sell you to a brothel. Or, they will take you to the lands beyond the sea. It's perfectly legal to sell and own human beings over there, you know."

Guts threw a skeptical glance towards the kid sitting on what must have once been an altar.

"You're lying."

"Not at all," Griffith laughed, kicking his feet back and forth. "Maybe you could go back to them and ask—Oh, but then, all my hard work would be for nothing. No, you shouldn't go back, no matter what," he finally decided with a sigh.

Guts frowned and crossed his arms, trying to look as intimidating as possible.

"And who the hell do you think you are, telling me what I oughta do or not."

"The one who saved you from being sold to a butchery! You know, meat is even harder to come by as of late—"

"The way your bullshit story keeps evolving isn't really gonna make it more believable."

"—And since those guys were about to catch you and become your owners, I, who won you over, am your new owner, now."

* * *

The church was old, with faded figures of saints peeling away from the walls and rats scurrying in the shadows, but it was a much better place than a deserted alley to sleep and Griffith said, he had won it from a small band of older children all on his own.

They hadn't known each other for long, but Guts couldn't find a single reason to doubt that was the truth.

They slept in what used to be crypts dug into the wall; Griffith took the one that was the highest because, he said, he was the oldest, a fact that seven year old and twice-Griffith's-size Guts had come to accept only after they had a fist fight and Griffith won that one and the rematch.

Behind the altar, amassed in a corner and covered with a thick cloth embroidered with some martyr's life, was a pile of broken toys, fake gemstones, two wooden swords, a golden cup and two heavy volumes that had somehow escaped the thieves' eyes during the decades. It was Griffith's treasure.

"Can you even read these?" Guts asked once, squinting at the elaborate characters blooming from flowers and trees and sometimes, figures of demons or angels.

"Well. Not yet, _but_," Griffith looked away and Guts thought that he probably wasn't used to being questioned in any way.

He grinned, and let a hand fall on top of Griffith's head. His hair was soft.

"Yeah, I'm sure you will."

There was nothing condescending about those words; it was, rather, a confession: I believe in you, and Griffith's seemed to understand.

Guts was sure he did when, smiling brightly, he looked up to him and promised, tomorrow I'll show you the most precious treasure; the one I want the most.

* * *

It was their first winter together when Guts felt the warmth of another body against his back.

"What do you think you're doing?" he did his best to sound more threatening than sleepy.

"It's cold. You're warm." Griffith's lips formed the words against his shoulder, but it wouldn't be until another six, seven years passed, that it would make Guts want to shove him away and pull him closer at once.

At this point, Griffith was nothing more than an annoying and clingy intruder that needed to go back to his own bed.

But, somehow, he was also Guts' only friend, and after a few nights of bickering, Guts decided that he could live with this—once in a while.

"You make a nice mattress," Griffith giggled against his chest and any retorts Guts might have come up with, were washed away by the content expression he saw on the other's face.

* * *

In the streets, Griffith taught him the best tricks to fool adults and steal fresh fruit and other treats on market days; he taught him about which shortcuts to take and which streets to avoid when he had to run from someone.

Sometimes, though, people – perfect strangers – would give Griffith things like old blankets or a tunic that didn't fit their child anymore, or even an apple and other small things to eat after seeing him smile or for other reasons that to Guts seemed equally mysterious.

It was on a day when the old lady from the bakery had given them a small loaf of sweet bread as thanks for helping her move some heavy sacks of flour, that they found themselves perched on an old tree, nibbling away at the bread and talking about things that had nothing to do with each other, jumping from a topic to another without too much thought.

"I think, it doesn't really matter why we are the way we are," twelve year old Griffith stared at the setting sun and broke the silence. "Whether our parents died or we were unwanted… It simply means that our place is different from that of other children. We will walk a different path. As long as we can move forward, that's all we need, right?"

Guts nodded, because there wasn't anything else he could have done.

He couldn't have told Griffith that he didn't know, that he wasn't sure, that he didn't want to be thrown away again and most of all, not by him. But, he also admired Griffith for being so strong, and so Guts forced himself to nod.

* * *

On market days, Griffith loved to stare at colored fabrics and unusual artifacts brought from the Orient and the lands beyond the sea. It wasn't exactly a desire to posses them, but rather to know and see everything that there was to see.

To Guts, who believed he'd already seen enough of the world in his brief life to be sick of it, this sort of greediness was a bit hard to understand – seemed more of a hassle than anything else – but, like every other thing that concerned Griffith, he'd learned to appreciate it as one of his quirks, one of the reasons – Guts was sure – he would shine brighter than anyone, one day.

"Oh! Look at this, Guts!"

Griffith was pointing excitedly to something among the trinkets laid out on an old woman's table.

Guts frowned. "Seems pretty ugly to me."

"But didn't you see how its eyes just—"

* * *

They were still basically children, the first time Griffith rolled over one night and kissed the skin between Guts' nose and his lips.

"Hey! What was that for?!" Guts practically roared after shoving him off and onto the ruined marble floor.

"Eh? That's what you do with the person you like the most," Griffith said as if it really were the most obvious truth in the world.

Guts knew though, that there was a lie, a dissimulation, somewhere: Griffith's eyes were too wide, too innocent, and his mouth was trembling slightly—probably from the effort to hold back a laugh. He wondered if he was being mocked, but then Griffith sat again next to him.

"Does that mean," he asked slowly. "That you don't like me?"

"Wha—Uh. That's," Guts looked away, and muttered without really understanding the question or the reply or himself. "That's not it."

"Oh, good."

Griffith beamed and, against all expectations, climbed back into his own cot.

It would be in a few years – when sleeping together had become torture for Guts – that Griffith would roll over again and, this time, press his mouth squarely against his.

Guts will look for reasons to push him away and find none.

* * *

The old lady grasped Griffith's wrist and deposited the ugly red stone into his palm.

"If it opened its eyes for you, then," was all she said.

Guts thought they must have both gone crazy, or that they were trying to play some stupid prank on him, until he and Griffith passed by the hill where the king's castle stood, looming over the whole city.

He saw, then, Griffith's eyes light up like every other time (_That one's the most precious treasure_, he had told him once, pointing towards the towers and high walls with the intensity of someone who was just one step away from touching them. _It's the one I want the most_.), and he saw also, the red stone's eyes blink and open wide, as if resonating with the wishes Griffith harbored within.


End file.
